Proudly the Opposite of What Passes for Progressive

Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Not everyone is thrilled with Donald Trump being elected. No kidding. And it seems there are some people, young people especially, who are in pain and need to be comforted and made to feel safe. And don’t you dare diminish their pain and anguish by telling them to “suck it up, pussies”, because that’s a hate crime. And it’s rude to point out that half of them didn’t even vote. It’s horrifying according to Stephen Colbert and John Oliver… two millionaire comedians. These two grown men had a cry and a hug on stage in front of an audience (maybe off-stage… I’m guessing); they were so traumatized by the results of the election – still!

Lena Dunham (our favourite), in a quest to come to terms with what happened, went on a retreat to Sedona, Arizona where she communed with nature and sought guidance from the canyon and listened to the rocks. No, this is not satire. Instead of traveling to the rural Michigan or suburban Pennsylvania and talking with actual real life Trump voters and speak with the “racists”, “sexists” and “bigots” that voted for Trump, she runs to an isolated posh resort where Mother Gaia will provide all the answers to soothe her troubled soul.

The Left is having a crybaby fit. The comparisons to fascism and Hitler are rampant. So, in keeping with that spirit, let’s use Hitler to discuss an aspect about the Left’s inability to take a deep breath and do some self-examination.

It’s been almost twenty years since I read it, but Ron Rosenbaum wrote a book called “Explaining Hitler” wherein he examined the various theories as to why Hitler was who he was and why he may have been motivated to do the things he’d done. But in the book he recounts going to visit an old Jewish Nazi hunter who asked him not to try and explain Hitler. His reasoning was that once you can identify the roots of someone’s evil acts, you are then obligated to forgive them for those actions because inevitably the roots will lie in that person’s humanity – they were abused as a child, suffered from mental illness, were scarred by past experiences, made gross misjudgments etc. And the old Nazi hunter was of the opinion that Hitler was evil. Full stop. We should never diminish this fact. Understanding Hitler was not only unnecessary, it was morally wrong, because we can never forgive what was done.

This is where the Left is today; they are the old Jewish Nazi hunter looking at the Trump election, Brexit, Rob Ford and other swings towards right-wing populism in the West and saying, “We will not try to understand why you voted that way, because we cannot forgive you.”

A long standing problem is that the Right tends to want to discuss government in terms of Effective vs. Ineffective. The Left knows it cannot win those arguments because historical evidence leans in favour of most traditional right-wing positions; free market solutions over government bureaucracies, traditional family stability over libertine lifestyles etc. So the Left want to make everything into a right vs. wrong moral argument. They are on the side of the angels – the Left stand for the Brotherhood of Man ™, Social Peace through Social Equality™ and Harmony with Nature™… these are “good” causes. Who cares if the policies we’re using to pursue these goals are ineffective or actually causing damage, it’s the intent that counts! Good intentions trump (no pun intended) bad policies! It’s the reason we see so much doubling down on bad ideas even when there is evidence they don’t work. Witness the Trudeau government’s recent announcement that they’re going to go further into deficit to fund a raft of “infrastructure” spending in order to stimulate the economy and “invest” in our economy… it doesn’t work. It didn’t last time, and throwing more money at a bad program won’t make it any better. But again, it’s the intentions that count, not the actual outcome. Double down, double down.

But I digress… since the Left reduces everything to a moral argument, the only way to win arguments is to portray the other side as not just wrong on policy but morally wrong. Evil. So this, in combination with a strong narcissistic trend in youth today, may in large part explain the unwillingness to see Trump’s election as legitimate and anything other than a vote affirming racism and sexism. We know it’s more nuanced than that – you can vote for a racist without voting for racism. But they will never acknowledge that because then they’d have to forgive 65 million Americans, 20 million Brits and 500,000 Torontonians. No way are they going to do that. They are a long long way from considering forgiveness. They are pissed. And so they have no intentions trying to explain to each other right-wing populism.

Like this:

Well, I underestimated that. I take solace in the knowledge that I was not the only one – practically nobody “in the know” got this right. Nate Silver, time to take your website down, pal.

I’m schizophrenic today; on the one hand I revel in the absolutely distraught Left. It’s fantastic. The snobs so really love mocking us and trying to reform us, cure us of our wrong-think that it’s only fair, it’s karma, that they are borderline suicidal today. On the other hand though, it was pretty reckless of Republicans to nominate a buffoon and it was almost as reckless for 48% of Americans to elect him. I really think we’re in for a long period of race riots, protest marches and civil disobedience that will be unprecedented in the history of the West. That’s not good.

Looking for silver linings, my biggest hope going forward is that Trump makes good on his backroom deal to nominate Ted Cruz to the Supreme Court, putting a young, brilliant, pro-life constitutionalist on the bench for a long time. And I really, really hope he buries the hatchet with Paul Ryan and adopts Ryan’s entitlement reforms which may be the only way America avoids going bankrupt.

But will Trump cancel free trade deals? I’ll believe it when I see it. One minute he says he will, the next minute he’s offering Britain a free trade deal after Brexit. Will he deport 11 million Mexicans? Again, I’ll believe when I see it. Will he team up with Putin and Russia to wipe out ISIS? Yes, that I think is happening. I would not buy stock in ISIS or Al-Queda or North Korea right now, that’s for sure. Will he prosecute Hillary Clinton? Nah, I think he’ll let that go so the doddering old crook can fade away.

Will all of these American celebrities pick up and move to Canada? Hardly. Maybe one.

In other words, it’s not going to be the end of the world. Everyone will be fine. Except for maybe the Hollywood douche bags, left wing media and public sector unions. I hope you all stay miserable for a long time, assholes, you were owed a comeuppance.

Share this:

Like this:

Tomorrow the US will elect a new President. Well, tomorrow is when they’ll vote; in all likelihood we won’t know the official result until December after all the legal challenges are concluded in every state where the margin of victory was a percentage point or two of the popular vote. That is, unless Trump badly underperforms the current polling and loses by a solid margin in Florida, which is the key tipping point state – Trump cannot win the election if he doesn’t win Florida. But right now it looks like he’s even odds to win that state but it won’t be by much, maybe one or two points; in which case expect the recount saga of 2000 repeated all over again if those state’s 29 electoral votes are the difference between either President Trump or President Clinton.

That said, find something else to watch on TV Tuesday night, Clinton will win the election. She has a better overall organization and Republicans have underperformed the polls the past couple of elections because they don’t have the ground game to get the vote to the polls. All the Hollywood elites, media, academics and public sector unions, the unelected left-wing cabal that steers the discourse in the West can breathe easier.

The question will then become – how violent is this going to get? What am I talking about?

See this clip from last Friday’s Bill Maher show… he more or less apologizes on behalf of the Left for their demonization of John McCain and Mitt Romney, the latter being a perfectly decent man, a moderate Republican but who was still compared to Hitler. We have our own example here in Canada where a very milquetoast and overly-cautious Stephen Harper was called a “fascist” on a regular basis, and when he was defeated last year the left-wing cabal were almost orgasmic in their celebrations. But Maher and the others in the clip are essentially saying, “All those other times we told you the Republicans were fascists… well we were exaggerating, but this time – this time – it’s true! It really, really is!”

We all know who Lena Dunham is… a talentless Hollywood darling and devoutly evil person who lied about being raped to make a good story for her book. Well, here she is in this clip obnoxiously pushing for her girl Hillary, or how about this clip where she (and her father, a man who made his living painting pictures of women’s breasts) says that white males should be made extinct. Do they say this stuff just to make their peers laugh and score brownie points with their fellow brain-dead leftists, or do they really believe white male babies should be aborted? Do they believe in eugenics? Because that’s evil, or do they not realize that? Oh wait, what are we talking about – they believe in an evil ideology that has produced more suffering than any other ideology in history, of course they realize they’re being evil.

Here is the thing… there is a cycle in our local, provincial/state, national politics… we elect leftists because that’s where our natural, romantic tendencies trend as a people – we all dream of a more inclusive and tolerant world, one that protects the vulnerable and promotes social and natural harmony. But the left think this type of world can be created by fiat and they, after a time, just go too far, their agendas get hijacked by special interests groups and the bills for their plans need to get paid… and then people push the reset button and elect conservatives to clean up the inevitable mess and do what conservatives do – provide balance, stability and rational government. David Miller was a horrible mayor of Toronto; cue Rob Ford. Bob Rae, horrible premier of Ontario, bring in Mike Harris. Paul Martin weak and ineffective Liberal, bring in Stephen Harper. Jimmy Carter a weak President brings in Ronald Reagan. It’s going to happen here in Ontario, finally, Wynne out, Brown in. Give it a few years and Trudeau will be trounced circa 2024 when it becomes abundantly clear that he’s bankrupted Canada. The pendulum swings back and forth; the left has good intentions but makes a mess of it, conservatives come in and clean up said mess, the left comes back and says we’ve learned our lessons and will be more reasonable this time, left get back into power but forget the lessons soon enough, and on it goes. Wash, rinse, repeat ad infinitum.

But this time we face a bigger more modern problem in that we are dealing with the crap that the aforementioned unelectedculturalleftists are dumping on us; in their recent emboldened moral vanity they now call conservatives stupid and bigoted, they insist on gutting the economy in a futile effort to stop global warming, they want to force you to call people “zie” and suggest white males are a cancer in the world to be cut out, they want a segregated society with different rules for every identity group and apologize for being the West.

Trump is a result of all this. But what people will realize after this election is that what they want is to hit the reset button on the culture, and not necessarily the politics. As the expression goes “politics is downstream of culture”. After Trump is defeated, after Brexit is delayed or quashed by courts in England, after we get a Bill C-16 here in Canada making it illegal to call someone “he” or “her” without their consent or a carbon tax that will slow the economy down during a recession, a large segment of the population in the West is going to start casting their eyes higher, at the culture that produces the unelected leftist cabal.

A positive outlook would be to say, hey – the “long arc of history” as Obama likes to describe it shows that there is a cycle and things will self-correct. Bu the more cynical outlook would say there are only three things that affect cultural change; demographics, violent conflict and technology. And two out of the three are largely beyond doing anything about. It’s going to be a rocky road the next few years.

I’ve said that I would vote for Donald Trump – not because I’m voting for him (he’s an idiot and not a conservative) nor because I’m voting against Hillary (I don’t buy the Lesser of Two Evils argument – don’t vote for either evil, no one is forcing you to vote). Rather I would vote for him just to piss off the John Olivers, Samantha Bees, Amy Schumers and all the other despicable condescending artistic and media elites, the Virtuous Ones that are always lecturing the rest of us on what defines a good and intelligent person and a proper world view. Anything that ruins their day, their week or their lives has some merit for me personally. Not a good or mature reason to vote for a despicable candidate, but a reason nonetheless.

That said, Donald Trump is an incredibly narcissistic and selfish individual jeopardizing conservatism for decades going forward. He has clearly conceded he’s going to lose the election and is now by saying all sorts of idiotic crap positioning himself for Trump TV post-election, where he can gather all the Alt-Right people from Breitbart and Info Wars and other unprincipled right-wing populist centres and, for a good amount of money, tell them they were screwed out of the election, the election was rigged, the media, Hollywood, everyone is against them. There’s a good amount of anger there to be tapped into. But he’s essentially pouring the gasoline that someone else is going to come along and light.

What is the Alt-Right, Trump’s base of support in this election?

Over the past 50 years the narrative has arisen that conservativism is a white male belief system. It’s not – it’s a belief in limited and rational government, a proper balance between freedom, security and the protection of minority rights, and a belief that only a stable society can be prosperous, hence why traditional institutions such as the family and church/synagogue/mosque and traditional values need to be protected and changed slowly and with great care, otherwise we risk destabilizing vulnerable segments of society. These beliefs have nothing to do with race or ethnicity.

But the western Left over the past 50 years has adopted the embrace of multi-culturalism as one of its Virtues, and as immigration from non-white countries has increased significantly the right has evolved the position that immigration needs to be more controlled if assimilation and the melting-pot ideas are being discarded. The position has legitimate roots in concerns about balance and stability with respect to economic impacts and social integration, but let’s be honest there was and still is a racist component in some resistance to immigration. At one time Italians, Ukrainians and Serbs were the unwanted immigrants, but over time they’ve all assimilated. Now it’s Arabs, Pakistanis and Hispanics. No doubt these are harder groups to integrate into a pluralist secular society and they bring additional questions of compatibility.

But what the Left did by adopting multi-culturalism along with open immigration at a time when demographically white people were having fewer and fewer children was allow them to say, “See those people on the right over there? They believe in certain things. But one thing they don’t believe in is you or your culture. If they’d had their way you may never have been allowed to come here.” And hence the Left successfully made it extremely difficult for conservatives to recruit from minority groups. This failure to recruit minorities only reinforced the idea that conservatives are white (and male). It’s a cycle that is hard to escape from.

This gives rise to the Alt-Right. The Alt-Right is a fundamentalist movement. The Alt-Right has essentially let the Left define them and steered them into an essentially non-conservative belief system – Fine! If you think that that’s what the right is about, that’s what it will be about ! The future is in our past and a return to a white European ethno-centrist value system that was the basis upon which the West and America was built! Make America Great Again! It’s not racist per se, they don’t preclude any race or ethnicity from joining the Alt-Right, but what they demand is an acknowledgement that white European ideals created our society and our decline is the result of non-stop attacks on and a dilution of those ideals from leftist traitors and immigrants with incompatible value systems. There is merit in the argument, but it is a backwards looking world view that is doomed to failure.

Again and again I come back to Steven Pressfield’s description of fundamentalism from the War of Art. It is succinct and brilliantly accurate. Following is from the book (bolding of words is mine);

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal.

What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut free from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family.

It is the state of modern life.

The fundamentalists (or, more accurately, the beleaguered individual who comes to embrace fundamentalism) cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past. He returns in imagination to the glory days of his race and seeks to reconstitute both of them and himself in their purer, more virtuous light. He gets back to basics. To fundamentals.

…

But the fundamentalist reserves his greatest creativity for the fashioning of Satan, the image of his foe, in opposition to which he defines and gives meaning to his own life. Like the artist, the fundamentalist experiences Resistance. He experiences it as temptation to sin. Resistance to the fundamentalist is the call of the Evil one, seeking to seduce him from his virtue. The fundamentalist is consumed with Satan, whom he loves as he loves death. Is it coincidence that the suicide bombers of the World Trade Center frequented strip clubs during their training, or that they conceived of their reward as a squadron of virgin brides and the license to ravish them in the fleshpots of heaven?….

To combat the call of sin, i.e., Resistance, plunges either into action or into the study of sacred texts. He loses himself in these, much as the artist does in the process of creation. The difference is that while the one looks forward, hoping to create a better world, the other looks backward, seeking to return to a purer world from which he and all have fallen.

I read so many parallels with the Alt-Right in there. They’ve conceded defeat for conservative ideals and as such, want to retreat to a world that can never exist again. The Republican elites have sold us out. Free trade deals are a failure, we need more protectionism. All immigration should not only be halted, but millions actually deported from whence they came. Men should be men, and women be women. You’ve gotten a raw deal. If only we could go back and live in the 1950’s when America was wonderful.

And as such, it is a very dangerous movement. There is a great deal of violence lurking there and we shouldn’t be surprised if it explodes post election. And it will explode if Donald Trump loses (which he will) and he doesn’t tone down his rhetoric in the final weeks. This should and will be every true conservative’s nightmare; the vilification and demonization of all on the right would accelerate 10-fold as we’d all be lumped in with these Alt-Right people and it would take decades to recover. We’d probably only recover once there’s been a Great Collapse and liberal failure is laid bare for all to see, and by then it will be too late.

There’s no essay-length topic rumbling around in the brain to write about, so how about a couple of quick hit items.

The Best and Worst Places for Women in Canada

So this year the best place for women to live in Canada is Victoria, BC and the worst is Windsor, Ontario. This is the same bullshit “study” that last year determined Kitchener-Waterloo was the worst place to live for women largely because to the “wage gap” between women and men despite the fact that women in K-W earned more per capita than women in other cities around the country. But wait – men made even more, therefore the wage gap was larger than average ipso facto K-W was a bad city for women to live in. No accounting for the fact that many women might be married or partnered to some of these higher earning men and thereby experience a higher standard of living than they might enjoy elsewhere.

If you went by this study then the best place for a woman to live in Canada would be a) where all the political representatives/leaders are women, b) where there is no violence against women, c) where women are the top wage earners and in positions of power.

Sounds like Paradise Island ruled by the Amazons with Wonder Woman as their protector. That’s the goal – a world without men. If only we could start replicating female humans in a test tube, I’m sure that’d be the feminist dream for the future of the world.

Speaking of Feminists

Again, some clueless person refers to Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau as a “warrior”. We know that all perspective has been lost, but c’mon. The Battle of Verdun in 1916 saw almost 650,000 killed and another million wounded over a nine month period. Men literally drowning in mud holes created by artillery blasts that they couldn’t climb out of. Corpses everywhere. Miles and miles of barbed wire with machine gunned bodies stuck on it. Mustard gas. Cholera and dysentery. But those men fought on. What on earth would those souls think about their sacrifices so that two gal-pals can ride around on their Vespa or what they’d think of a generation that holds them up as some sort of ideal?

Stephen Crowder made fun of Emma Watson’s speech to the UN a few months ago. Isn’t it wonderful when a person with so much wealth and fame can lecture us about our “privilege”? I’m sure the roofer, toiling up a ladder three floors high, carrying 2 bundles of shingles to work precariously on a massively sloped roof would love it if you yelled at them, “you lucky privileged bastards! Stop oppressing Emma Watson!”

PS – where are their helmets? Oh wait, they’re so oppressed that these two attractive women can’t be arsed to wear legally mandated helmets because then people (men) wouldn’t be able to see how beautiful they are.

I will contend that 90% of the SJW movement is evil. C’mon, you say, misguided maybe, but evil? But I’m sure that communists and Nazis didn’t think what they were trying to bring to the world was evil, but now in the fullness of time the great majority of us can look back and say yep, those were evil ideologies, they killed a lot of people and made hundreds of millions of people miserable. Same thing here – they’re bullies, they’re enemies of free speech, they’re anti-life (abortion, assisted suicide), they’re misandrists, segregationists and against scientific progress and economic prosperity. If they took over we’d live in a completely miserable world. That’s evil.

You want proof on what kind of horrible people we’re talking about? See this clip. What a POS.

First, raise the microphone up so Mr. Trump stops leaning forward to speak. He is trying to appeal to married women, that’s your swing voter. Leaning forward to blurt answers comes across as aggressive. Aggressive = not good. Mr. Trump needs to look stately; stand up tall, keep movement to a minimum, talk to the camera when you speak and not Hillary or the moderator. Speak to the American people.

Second, get rid of the split screen. Mr. Trump is a tall man with stature. She is a dumpy old woman. People subconsciously associate stature and presence with leadership. The split screen not only erased that advantage you had, but also allowed the camera to show your every strange wince and expression. Why did Mr. Trump find it so hard to sip water? He needs to practice drinking.

Your candidate is a horrible debater. He tends to overuse words like “tremendous”, and “beautiful” when he’s trying to think of things to say. His ramblings border on incoherent and he seems incapable of finishing an answer. Besides prescribing him some Ritalin before the next debate to help focus his mind, perhaps he would do well to memorize some stock answers to expected questions like Hillary did. For example;

On the issue of cyber-security:

“Your asking Secretary Clinton about cyber-security? That’s rich. The FBI report on Secretary Clinton’s emails and private server said that her server had been hacked by foreign agents. Multiple times. How much classified material was lifted by hackers Secretary Clinton? What happened to the multiple cell phones that you lost but never reported? The FBI report says that you clicked on a phishing email… for real? Which one? The one about the Nigerian prince with millions in a bank account? Or the one about a free time-share in Costa Rica? Why would anyone listen to you on cyber-security? Unless it’s maybe advice on how to delete 33,000 emails.”

On the issue of not revealing his tax returns:

“You know why I haven’t revealed my tax returns? Because I have done what every other smart rich person does; hire the best accountants and lawyers and instruct them find ways for me to pay as little tax as possible. Does that make me unpatriotic? No, it makes me smart. And it makes me no different than your friends in Hollywood, the George Clooneys of the world throwing $10 million dollar fundraising dinners for you and Obama, but have homes in Switzerland because that’s where they hide their money away from US taxes. I want to cut taxes on the wealthy because I don’t want rich people to have to hide their money or take it overseas, I want them to repatriate it. Contrast that with your plan Secretary Clinton, to raise taxes even more on the wealthy. It’s a fraud. You won’t raise money for free tuition and all the other wonderful things you want to spend money on… all you’re going to do is drive more money and investment out of the country.”

On his apparent support for the Iraq war in 2002:

“I wasn’t a politician in 2003. I was a business man. I am allowed to muse in public on whether or not the war was a good thing. Perhaps I may have said that it sounded like a good idea to me at the time. But you know what? I rely on my elected representative to lead on those types of issues. And you know who was my senator for the state of New York in 2003? It was you, Secretary, or should I say, Senator Clinton, and you voted for the Iraq war.”

After Hillary speaks to the US allies to reassure them:

“That, Secretary Clinton, is an example of why you don’t get it. You are more worried about talking to, and reassuring people in other countries than you are about reassuring the American people that we aren’t going to be asked to police the world while other countries, our supposed allies, freeload and fail to pay their fair share or honour their military commitments to our alliances.”

These are some examples. Please feel free to contact us for help with more stock responses with regards to Black Lives Matter, race riots, accusations of sexism etc.

Yes, he’s scumbag. I’ve written plenty here about how he’s not a conservative, he’s not a decent or humble person, he’s a rich narcissist and unlikely to solve any of the problems the US has at the moment. I think his ideas of building a wall, deporting 11 million people, banning all Muslim immigration; canceling free trade deals… they’re all crap ideas.

And no, it’s not a lesser of two evils thing, even though Hillary Clinton is a pretty deplorable character as far as that goes… she’s the very definition of a political “insider”, guilty of corruption and treasonous behavior, enabler to her husband’s many sins and a chronic liar.

No, the reason I would vote for Donald Trump is that this is clearly not an ideological election. This is not a contest of the ideas of the right vs. the ideas of the left. Trump is not ideological, nor is Clinton. They speak to elements of their parties, but they don’t represent either party’s predominant ideology. Thus, when choosing between the two you need a different reason to pick one or the other. Character is a wash and neither truly represents a “side” in the political or cultural wars.

So, what I like about Trump is that his enemies are for the most part, people I despise. That’s pretty much the summation of my reason for voting for him. An “enemy of my enemy is my friend”, sort of deal. I don’t really want to see him as POTUS. I’m not a nihilist that wants to burn it all down and rebuild from the bottom up. But there is a group of people out there who if Trump wins, their heads would quite literally explode – and I would LOVE to see that. I would vote for him quite simply because I like the enemies he’s made. Well done.

Take for example this stupid twat, Jill Soloway, who wins an Emmy award and promptly uses the opportunity to compare Donald Trump to Hitler:

“He’s a complete dangerous monster, and any moment I have to call Trump out to being an inheritor to Hitler, I will,” she said, to applause.

Or how about when Donald Trump has the temerity to call the Chelsea bombing a “bombing” before it was actually declared a bombing. Horrors, he got it right. It’s well reported now that CNN and MSNBC edited Hillary Clinton calling it a “bombing” before the police said that was what it was. That’s the other part of the equation – most people HATE the media.

Then there’s the outrage – OUTRAGE! That Jimmy Fallon would dare to have Trump on his show and make small talk with the man. He ruffled his hair!?! Oh my God, man… would you ask to ruffle the mustache of Hitler?

Then there’s Bono claiming that Donald Trump is possibly America’s “worst idea” ever. Idiot, stick to your music. The US has had slavery, civil war, McCarthy-ism, Jim Crowe and so many other bad ideas that nominating Donald Trump for President doesn’t even make the top 20.

It’s to the point where I am reminded of this interview several years back Michael Coren (before he went traitor to the cause) and the wonderful Melanie Phillips. She starts at the 2:00 mark discussing how conservative thinking is demonized, but what he says at 4:40ish is also what Ross Douthat is getting at in this column; approximately 35-40% of the population sit at home and are beaten over the head, day after day, and told that what they believe is wrong. What they believe is not just wrong – it’s evil. They are mocked as being racist, bigoted and stupid. So, one of two things can be the outcome when a large chunk of the population is dismissed as “deplorables”; either these people surrender and “convert” or they go underground but find different ways to vent when the opportunity comes. Like the Brexit vote. Like Donald Trump. These are not votes for something. Rather these are votes to stick it to the elites that have been belittling them.

I don’t know if Donald Trump can win. It doesn’t look likely. Conceivably he could get more of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton and still lose because she’s got the black and suburban soccer mom votes sewed up in the key states. But imagine if he did. No, no – don’t imagine the nukes on North Korea or billions spent on a ridiculous second coming of the Great Wall. Worry about that later. Instead, just imagine John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, 99% of Hollywood and the mainstream press… imagine them staring aghast at the TV screen as the results roll in. That might be reason enough for me.

Free speech is a sticky subject. I’m not an absolutist in the mold of Mark Steyn or Ezra Levant or others – I think there is a balance to be struck between maximizing what can (and often should) be said and what crosses the line.

Where might I draw the line? Well, for example, some clowns brought a poster to a recent Toronto FC game against the Montreal Impact, depicting a blue-thong wearing female Montreal fan performing fellatio on a supposed red hoodie wearing Toronto fan with the headline “Montreal Sucks” in French. It’s vulgar, but could you defend it as free speech? Sure, some might and I would see the theoretical libertarian argument. But where I would draw the line is that, if I have to explain it to my children then it is wrong. You’ve now imposed a burden on me that I neither asked for nor should reasonably expect to be responsible for as participating adult member of society. No thanks. That poster should not be allowed because it’s a fairly straightforward depiction of a sexual act, there’s no subjective interpretation of it required. Only extremists would argue otherwise that it’s my obligation to explain to my young daughter what that sign means and not the clowns’ obligation to exercise some basic human decency.

But then there’s the story today about a Calgary student being told to take his “Make America Great Again” hat off because it represents “hate speech”. “Make America Great Again” is one of Donald Trump’s campaign slogans. In the video of the incident the young lady objecting to the hat (who is surprisingly attractive and not an obese ugly troll like so many SJW’s) cites her incorrect understanding of what Trump wants with regards to immigration and as such because it’s a Trump hat, regardless of what is actually written on the hat, it represents something hateful. In SJW parlance then she’s “triggered” by the sight of the hat and wants it removed because it offends her.

Now we’re into subjective interpretation as opposed to the Toronto FC sign. If we go down this route almost anything anyone says or writes may be construed by some person somewhere as “offensive”. It’s a never ending rabbit hole to fall into. But this is what the vast majority of SJW’s want; the carte blanche power to essentially bully anyone and everyone that they disagree with into shutting up because they’re being offensive, they’re triggering people, they’re infringing on “safe spaces”.

Here’s a prime example of the psychopathic bullying of an SJW in full flight. Watch the video and tell me that if you were not the Lyft driver you wouldn’t have not only kicked this bitch out of the car way sooner, but also backed the car up and tried to run her over to do the world a favour. Thankfully there’s been some justice since this became public and this abusive woman with obvious mental problems has been driven underground and off social media. The driver has a right to display the bobble head of a Hawaiian person because there’s no obligation imposed on the persons seeing it to interpret it any other way that how it’s presented. Had the presentation been of a Hawaiian person being cut in half by a white navy captain? OK… that would cross the line and you’d be within bounds to ask to have that removed from sight.

It’s nuanced, but not that difficult for ordinary people to exercise common sense. But we do need to actively tell the triggered little babies of the world to stuff it because free speech is a continuum; at one end is the vulgar, indecent, truly offensive that is hard to accept but at the other end is honest scientific inquiry – if you give the SJW’s an inch they will take a mile and soon they won’t just be shutting down offensive speech, they’ll be shutting down research and analysis that just happens to uncover truths they find uncomfortable.

I’ve become a big fan of Jocko Willink of late and based on his praise for the book, I’ve begun reading About Face by Col. David Hackworth. Reading the book gives you great perspective on how soft (and fortunate) we’ve become in our modern age; Hackworth joined the army at age 15, and by age 21 was a 1st Lieutenant commanding 200 infantry in the Korean War. In the book he details the horrors of fighting in Korea and later Vietnam, the trench warfare, trying to sleep and cope with constant artillery shelling and sniping and attacks, rats nibbling on your toes at night, digits cut off due to frostbite, starvation and dehydration, feet rotting due to poor hygiene and constant rain, comrades killed and wounded on a daily basis… Hackworth at one point gets his arm and shoulder shredded by landing on a grenade, and when a doctor tells him he will never straighten his arm again he jumps out of his hospital bed, drain still inserted in his arm after surgery, does a push-up to straighten his arm and tells the doctor to shove off. This is a warrior. Without these types of individuals none of us would enjoy any of the freedoms we take for granted. Only those who are intellectually dishonest would argue otherwise.

It is to laugh when Donald Trump claims to have made many sacrifices and then you compare his “list” to individuals like Hackworth and others who unfortunately lost their lives. Trump is an idiot; the proper response to the question of what sacrifices he’s made was to admit in all honesty that he has not made any sacrifices comparable to Capt. Khan and his family, but then subtly turn it around and ask what sacrifices can Hillary Clinton claim? Barack Obama? Bernie Sanders? Any Leftie leader in the US? Instead he didn’t do that, he attacked the family of a fallen soldier. That alone is proof that he is unfit to lead a nation and be a Commander-in-Chief.

But then how much different is this; an artist in B.C. paints a fawning picture of Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau performing a yoga pose and then has the temerity of call her a “warrior”, the “Queen” of Canada… grow up woman. You are a child that is impressed by ridiculous things. She and her husband are the hipster products of a silver-spoon fed privilege that haven’t made any sacrifices on a scale with real warriors. Neither have what it takes for a real fight or conflict.

Take for example the latest story that our Defense Minister, an actual warrior, is being humiliated with the assigned task of searching for a peacekeeping mission somewhere in Africa that Canada can attach onto, because for Justin Trudeau the military is a tool for Liberal virtue-signaling of what a wonderful, peaceful nation we are, how much he believes in an unworkable utopian United Nations, instead of understanding that true peace is achieved by our warriors fighting for our side, killing people and breaking things that belong to the other side, not just standing in between two groups of hostile people. How’d that Canadian/UN peace keeping mission go in Rwanda?

When two dogs get into a fight what happens the vast majority of the time is that one dog will lie down and show its belly to the other dog. It submits. You won, you are the leader. Rarely does the superior dog then continue the fight and kill the dog that has submitted unless it has behavioral issues, which tend to be more common in breeds like pit bulls, not because they are hardwired to kill other dogs but because they are chronically mishandled by their human masters which leads to said behavioral problems. But let us not digress.

The “right” has been submitting to the “left” now for the last 50 odd years. Pretty much since the 1960’s the right has been showing its belly to the left and conceding ground on all manner of social and cultural issues. It’s a misconception that true conservatives are against social progress on matters pertaining to women’s equality, gay rights, race relations, cultural diversity. But what conservatives try to petition for is Balance, Stability and Rational Government. Progress is great, but taken too far and too quickly it unbalances society, produces instability and results in governments that want an activist role rather than merely manage the affairs of civilization. Unbalanced, unstable and irrational is not a successful formula for any society and inevitably over the long haul leads to human tragedy, suffering and pain.

The pit bulls in my metaphor are the left, the social justice warriors (SJWs) and progressives who are constantly on the march, unable to acknowledge victories and completely amnesiac to where we were as a society even a few short years ago. There seems to be on the left a pathological impulse to fix the world whereas conservatives would tend to argue the only lasting fixes are internal as individuals. Stop asking for the government to fix every ill in the world; look in the mirror, adjust your behavior accordingly, set an example for others and trust that people will follow.

This was a long way of getting to the current Ghostbusters movie and the controversy over Twitter banning Milo Yiannopoulos. The movie looks like it sucks but that’s almost beside the point.

Hollywood is pretty devoid of new ideas and risk adverse so for the most part all you see lately are endless sequels and remakes. Hence their lack of imagination leads them to the brilliant idea that they should remake Ghostbusters with an all-female cast. Firstly, the original Ghostbusters wasn’t all that funny; could they not find a funnier 80’s comedy to remake? Second, comedy remakes tend to be busts because so much of the success of the original is dependent on cast chemistry and jokes that are relevant to that era… fart jokes were hilarious in the 80’s, now it’s got to be upgraded to ghost slime in vaginal cavities? OK, whatever, har har. And lastly, nothing against an all-female cast, Bridesmaids was hilarious for example, but why not create a new comedy for female comedians? Why scavenge a thirty year old comedy, ironically written by men, and simply try to swap out the cast genders?

So the trailer for the movie becomes the most disliked video ever posted to YouTube. Then after it comes out one of the lead actresses, Leslie Jones, gets into Twitter war with trolls that lasts more than eight hours (does she not realize the best thing to do is ignore idiots? Not feed them? Or was this part of a publicity scheme?) It ends with her threatening to quit Twitter and then pleading to Twitter that they do something and they do – they ban the supposed ring leader, Milo despite the evidence that he never actually called her anything racist.

Now Milo Yiannopolous is definitely an acquired taste. He’s a flamboyantly gay libertarian who likes to go after “third wave” feminists and SJWs. Watching him do it is quite funny and provides a perverse satisfaction; it’s like when your older brother would grab your arms and starting forcing you to hit yourself with your own hands and asks “why are you hitting yourself, what’s wrong with you?”. They can’t combat a gay man attacking them in the most un-PC way; they don’t know how to respond. But his soaring popularity is indicative of the times.

Brendan O’Neil writes a pretty good piece on this story, but now he’s under attack… on Twitter. His column is not completely nonsensical. The only caveat I’d have is this; the left shows no graciousness and so even if a conservative were to show proper decorum, were to attempt to discuss things rationally, there is no reciprocal behavior. The left act like the aforementioned pit bulls. So in the end a lot of people on the right give up and say, “Hey, if you think we’re incurable bigots then fine! Let’s be incurable bigots!” and a large segment then give themselves permission to indulge in their worst instincts. No more submission. It’s what has given rise to Trump, an unapologetic bigot who hilariously has had the past two night’s speech upon speech at the Republican National Convention about what a wonderful husband, father and human being he is, despite being married three times, a serial philanderer, and a crook who stiffs people who’ve worked for him. A guy who is on trial for fraud. One of his character witnesses is Rudy Giuliani, a man who let his wife know about their divorce during a press conference after months of running around in public with his mistress. But you know what? None of his fans (or Milo’s fans) care, if the other side doesn’t care about standards, why should we?

It’s sad. Conservatism at its roots should be about character. It already evaporated long ago on the left (Hillary Clinton 30 years ago would have been indicted), and now it’s all but evaporated on the right. Fear for the future.